Blocked

Blog pages from Blogger and Typepad seem to be blocked in China. The actual Blogger site though, is not. That means one could post new entries, only the blog page itself can't be viewed. Livejournal pages are ok. I can access them fine. There must be some logic, some fundamental reason why blogspot and typepad pages are blocked, while livejournal pages arent, but I havent figured it out.

Anyway... Nanjing doesnt have a proper winter. The temperature the past week has dipped to the 6 below (C) but still it doesnt seem to want to give me the benefit of fulfilling that ultimate Pinoy childhood fantasy of walking in the snowfall. All I get out of the temperature drop is the loss of all sensation in my face, which often leads to that phenomenon of suddenly tasting something salty in my mouth and realizing that snot is pouring out of my nose without me being able to feel it. I know it's just snow and it's really no big deal and I know my buddies out there in the East Coast of the United States and in Canada are probably sick of it by now, but come on. You remember your first snowfall before it turned into a yearly nuisance you have to live with, right? How you acted like kids in it? A colleague and I were here 2 or 3 years ago in the winter when we were blessed with some early snow in late November. We were in a department store at the time checking out DVD players and he said, "Look outside." Snow. We went out. We looked up at the snowflakes falling out of the night sky, visible only when the streetlights hit it. We tried to catch a few in our tongues. Yes, we looked like idiots. My colleague was going 'Woohoo!'. We only stopped when an old man, hunched over in his coat, hands deep in his pockets, probably feeling the cold down to his bones, stopped and watched us with what looked like bemusement, and went 'Woohoo!' along with us. He looked silly, and, we realized, so did we. We smiled at him, he smiled back, we went on our way.

It wasnt as if it were our first time to see snow. We have. I remember walking down Fifth avenue in Manhattan after some serious winter weather the night before, when a huge chunk of ice fell from some skyscraper and landed two feet in front of me with a crash. I calmly walked on. Everybody else on the street didnt seem to see anything happen. I only realized later that, Holy crap! I couldve been killed! But maybe, having come from a tropical country with a colonial past such as ours, having grown up with Bing Crosby's White Christmas, having had the pleasure of putting up a Christmas tree (plastic, with white frosting) in our childhood, it just takes us back to a more innocent time so we just cut loose. Til that old man came and went Wooohoo!

Or maybe, we were just bored. We were in Nanjing after all, and we take fun wherever we can find it.